Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes and Donald Trump are all powerful men who had been in the public eye for years, when suddenly a woman’s allegations of sexual misconduct brought other accusations into the spotlight.
This pattern is common, not only because accusers feel safer sharing their stories once an allegation is public, but also because multiple studies show that if someone has committed sexual assault once, they’re more likely to do so again.
Kristin Anderson told the Washington Post for a story published Friday that Trump groped her under her skirt in the early 1990s. Her account follows those of Jessica Leeds, Rachel Crooks and Natasha Stoynoff, who accused Trump of assault in stories published earlier this week. Trump has denied each incident. Leeds, 74, said he groped her in the first-class cabin of an airplane three decades ago. Crooks and Stoynoff both say he kissed them without warning and without consent in 2005, the same year Trump married current wife Melania Trump.
An anonymous woman has also filed a lawsuit accusing Trump of raping her when she was 13, and Trump denies that as well. A judge has scheduled an initial status conference for that lawsuit on Dec. 16 in a New York district court.
Repeat offenders
In a survey of college-aged men, one-third said they would force a woman to have intercourse if there were no consequences. When that act was referred to as “rape,” the number of men dropped to 14 percent.
There is little research on serial sexual assaulters, but a study on undetected recidivism in convicted rapists found two-thirds of 83 rapists had previously been convicted of sexual assault.
The rapists studied also had an average of three convictions on record, and they admitted to an average of five similar offenses for which they were never apprehended. However, the study’s authors said this is “at best a very conservative estimate.” The authors said the more likely average number was 14 undetected sexual offenses.
“Generally and not surprisingly based on prior work in violence and sexual violence in particular, prior engagement in sexual assault predicted future engagement in sexual assault,” the authors wrote.
For Cosby and Ailes, the allegations permanently damaged their careers. Trump has suffered a large dip in polls following a leaked video of him talking about kissing and groping women without their consent, but it’s unclear how the allegations will affect his future.
“I just start kissing them,” Trump said to Billy Bush in the video published by The Washington Post. “It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”
Traditional gender roles
Another study looking at who is most at risk of committing sexual assault had the same conclusion: The best indicator of whether someone will commit sexual assault in the future is if they have assaulted someone in the past.
That study also tried to analyze personality indicators, and researchers found sexually aggressive men were more likely to believe in traditional gender roles.
The authors suggest that believing in traditional gender roles may affect how men interpret token resistance, defined as saying no to a person even though you actually intend to engage in sexual activity with them. Men who reported experiencing token resistance from a partner were three times more likely to behave in a sexually aggressive manner in the future.
“It may be that men who are sexually aggressive expect women to refuse sexual activity for reasons related to social norms, such as not wanting to appear ‘easy,’ ” the study reads. “In addition, this may also be related [to] how they view their own role in heterosexual relationships. Perpetrators may believe that their role consists of persuading women to engage in sexual activity.”
Donald Trump has implied in past interviews that men who change the diapers of their children “act like the wife,” and that he expects to act like the breadwinner of his family while his wives have taken care of the kids.
“I mean, I won’t do anything to take care of them. I’ll supply funds and she’ll take care of the kids. It’s not like I’m gonna be walking the kids down Central Park,” Trump said.
He also said “putting a wife to work is a very dangerous thing,” in a 1994 interview with ABC News.
Trump has said multiple times his comments to Billy Bush in the video were just “locker room talk.” In the second presidential debate, he denied ever committing sexual assault, which is what at least two women said prompted them to come forward.
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